_The Waning of Materialism_ (2010)
amazon .com/dp/B006HCU59Q?
** you do not have permission to see this link **
The twenty-three papers in this volume, both individually and collectively, help
to show why and in what ways materialism is on the wane. By saying that
materialism is on the wane, we do not mean that materialism is in the process
of being eclipsed—nor do we mean that materialism is likely to be eclipsed at
any point in the foreseeable future. Indeed, there is good reason to think that
materialism is a perennial fixture of philosophy (not to mention cognitive science).
After all, materialism is a readily intelligible monistic worldview, appealing in
its apparent simplicity, and a natural complement to the impressive ongoing
successes in the natural sciences.
In spite of this, materialism is waning in a number of significant respects—one
of which is the ever-growing number of major philosophers who reject materialism
or at least have strong sympathies with anti-materialist views. It is of course
commonly thought that over the course of the last sixty or so years materialism
achieved hegemony in academic philosophy, and this is no doubt right by
certain measures—for example, in absolute number of self-identified materialist
philosophers of mind or in absolute number of books and journal articles
defending materialism. It is therefore surprising that an examination of the
major philosophers active in this period reveals that a majority, or something
approaching a majority, either rejected materialism or had serious and specific
doubts about its ultimate viability. The following is just a partial sampling of
these philosophers, more or less in order of birth.
David there is a word you keep using that I don’t understand.
Materialism
Can you explain it to me?
No links.
No quotes.
In your own words.
Einstein famously said that if we couldn’t explain an idea to an eight year old we didn’t really understand it ourselves. So, pretend I’m am eight year old and explain it to me.
This will count as 100% of your final grade.
“Almost every post on your thread on Peshitta primacy drew from scholars from previous generations who were indeed interested in the Aramaic origins of Christianity but who did not support Peshitta primacy, eg, all of your posts on Torrey”
What was “the larger, on-going, more intelligent discussion”?
“when one is aware of the ever evolving scientific discussion of evolution, it is evident that there is no real scientific support for creationism/ID”
What is “the larger, on-going, more intelligent discussion”?
“quote-mining of James Shapiro’s review of one of Behe’s books”
What was “the larger, on-going, more intelligent discussion”?
Franklin M. Harold, _The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms, and the Order of Life_ (2001), on 205
** you do not have permission to see this link **
amazon .com/Way-Cell-Molecules-Organisms-Order/dp/0195163389/
We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity (16);
but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.
There is room for discovery here, and for reflection too;
nowhere is the appeal of Gould’s “pluralistic Darwinism” more keenly felt than in the study of cell evolution.
Page 266
16. Behe, 1996; see also the rebuttal by Coyne, 1996.
Cf.
James A. Shapiro, “In the Details… What?” _National Review_ (16 Sept 1996), 62-65, on 64, far-left column
PDF
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Surely, then, contemporary Darwinists have answers to rebut critics like Professor Behe.
In fact, there are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.
It is remarkable that Darwinism is accepted as a satisfactory explanation for such a vast subject– evolution– with so little rigorous examination of how well its basic theses work in illuminating specific instances of biological adaptation or diversity.
Professor Behe’s third goal is…
“The last two hundred years of New Testament scholarship analyzing the text, linguistics, and historical context of the New Testament”
What’s the date of the earliest such “New Testament scholarship”? (exactly two hundred years ago?)
“What is ‘the larger, on-going, more intelligent discussion’?”
“The scientific discussion of evolution that has taken place since the time of Darwin”
Was there “scientific discussion of evolution” before “the time of Darwin”?
Meaning of “evolution”?
“What was ‘the larger, on-going, more intelligent discussion’?”
“James Shapiro’s review of Behe’s book, _Darwin’s Black Box_”
But not “The scientific discussion of evolution that has taken place since the time of Darwin”?
“linked to in another thread”
At
** you do not have permission to see this link **
and
** you do not have permission to see this link **
“If you don’t know the meaning of evolution in the scientific contexts”
The term has multiple meanings in “scientific contexts.”
If you decline to define how you’re using the term, so be it.
Do you disagree with any of this?:
David P. Barash, “God, Darwin and My College Biology Class” (Sept 27, 2014)
** you do not have permission to see this link **
The more we know of evolution, the more unavoidable is the conclusion that living things, including human beings, are produced by a natural, totally amoral process, with no indication of a benevolent, controlling creator.
Do you see any flaws in this?:
Angus J. L. Menuge, “Against Methodological Materialism” in _The Waning of Materialism_ (2010)
amazon .com/dp/B006HCU59Q
** you do not have permission to see this link **
~380:
Darwinian theory is itself often a ‘science stopper,’ or at least a ‘science retarder.’
It has encouraged scientists to give up prematurely, by claiming that some structures are nonfunctional though they were later shown to have an important function (e.g. junk DNA).
~387:
Darwinism predicts messy, makeshift designs, dependent on the fortuitous co-optation of components developed for other purposes.
And it predicts vestigial organs, ‘junk’ DNA and other useless memorabilia of a species’ voyage through evolutionary history.
Indeed Darwinists frequently claim to have found just such evidence.
By contrast, the hypothesis of a rational top—down designer predicts that modules are not merely co-opted and may have a dedicated function as they are designed to play a specific role in contributing to a particular type of system.
Components may of course be re-used, and a rational designer may develop components that have a wide range of uses to avoid ‘re-inventing the wheel,’ but in the long run, bad design would only occur if the original design had degenerated or been upset in some way.
Rational, top—down design is not the same as optimal design, and mutations or copying errors might lead to a loss of crucial information and hence functionality, but the prediction would still be that in normal, functioning systems, there would be less conspicuously bad design than is predicted by Darwinism.
~387-388:
Design suggests that modern biologists are well-advised to search for analogs to biological systems in engineering and computer science, using an analysis of the elements required in the latter cases to predict biological structures playing a similar role in the former case.
(Interestingly, the assumption that biologists are investigating engineered systems has spawned a whole new area of science called biomimetics, in which engineers look for design principles in living systems to improve their own machines.)
While Darwinism may stop short, satisfied with a messy and illogical compromise, design will prompt scientists to look for underlying mechanisms that unlock order in the seeming chaos.
Perhaps the true function of much DNA wrongly identified as ‘junk’ and of organs wrongly labeled vestigial would have been discovered far earlier if more scientists had followed design.
“The current scientific context is Shapiro’s review of Behe’s book, from which you yourself selectively quoted”
As did you.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
James A. Shapiro
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; University of Chicago
James A. Shapiro has worked as professor of microbiology at the University of Chicago since 1973.
Earlier, while working at Harvard, Shapiro was part of the first team to isolate a single gene from an organism.
An expert in bacterial genetics, he proposes the concept of Natural Genetic Engineering, a process described to account for novelty created in the process of biological evolution.
Shapiro is an advocate of non-Darwinian evolution and is a critic of the modern synthesis.
He has published primary scientific literature on evolution since the early 90s.
“Shapiro’s proposed non-Darwinian advances in the theory of evolution while not yet a consensus are nonetheless exciting”
Which if any of “Shapiro’s proposed non-Darwinian advances in the theory of evolution” do you agree with?
“To oppose as insufficient a purely Darwinian view of change is not to support supernatural creationism/ID”
Do you regard “a purely Darwinian view of change” as “insufficient”?
“Behe and you are stuck in an old, sterile debate that does not appreciate how science has moved on”
[2024 Shapiro]”The dispute between religious and naturalistic accounts of species origins is ongoing”
“The current scientific context is Shapiro’s review of Behe’s book, from which you yourself selectively quoted”
“As did you”
“Yes, indeed”
I didn’t notice _any_ effort to place your selective quotations of Shapiro into the context of Shapiro’s _decades_ of work and writings.
Nor did I notice any effort to place your selective quotations of Shapiro into the context of “the scientific discussion of evolution that has taken place since the time of Darwin.”
Do you believe that:
“The ID argument has a valid point with regard to the explanatory limits of neo-Darwinism”?
the “Intelligent Design (ID) movement” is “quasi-scientific”?
James A. Shapiro, “Evolution Is Neither Random Accidents nor Divine Intervention: Biological Action Changes Genomes” (Spring 2024)
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Over a century later Ernst Mayr, a leader of the mid-twentieth century neo-Darwinist “Modern Synthesis,” wrote:
“The proponents of the synthetic theory maintain that all evolution is due to the accumulation of small genetic changes, guided by natural selection and that trans-specific evolution [i.e. origins of new species and taxonomic groups] is nothing but an extrapolation and magnification of the events that take place within populations and species.”
The dispute between religious and naturalistic accounts of species origins is ongoing.
The conflict persists to the present day among a significant fraction of the U.S. population, and there are serious movements to ban the teaching of evolution in schools.
Support for evolution guided by divine intervention has a toehold in the quasi-scientific Intelligent Design (ID) movement, initiated by Michael Behe (_Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution_, 1996) and carried on by members of the Discovery Institute and other creationist think tanks.
The basic argument that ID theorists make is that natural selection of random hereditary changes cannot produce genomes capable of expressing all the intricate networked adaptations modern molecular biology has revealed to operate in living organisms.
This conundrum is, in Behe’s words, “irreducible complexity.”
Hence, the ID theorists posit a need for divine intervention.
The ID argument has a valid point with regard to the explanatory limits of neo-Darwinism, still widely regarded as the only legitimate scientific explanation of evolution.
ID falls down by assuming (as do mainstream evolutionists) that genome change occurs from outside the boundaries of life itself.
Within the scientific community, there is agreement that the hereditary variation necessary for evolutionary change occurs by natural means.
But significant difference exists between scientists about what constitutes “natural means.”
While random mutation leading to gradual change (phyletic gradualism) was a reasonable assumption to make in 1859 and even in the 1940s (when the Modern Synthesis was proposed), the scientific understanding of how genome change actually occurs has grown tremendously since then.
There have been a series of revolutionary changes in our analysis and understanding of heredity and the processes behind genome evolution.
I. Barbara McClintock’s discoveries of…
“Shapiro is engaging in real scientific discussion, whereas Behe and you are trying to insert your religious beliefs into what should be a more scientific discussion”
Exactly which “religious beliefs” is Behe “trying to insert… into what should be a more scientific discussion”?
“Do you regard ‘a purely Darwinian view of change’ as ‘insufficient’?”
“I don’t have the scientific expertise to sensibly and credibly agree or disagree”
Do you agree with this?:
“Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”
— Richard Dawkins, _The Blind Watchmaker_
“If you don’t know the meaning of evolution in the scientific contexts”
“The term has multiple meanings in ‘scientific contexts.’ If you decline to define how you’re using the term, so be it”
“The current scientific context is Shapiro’s review of Behe’s book, from which you yourself selectively quoted.
If you do not understand his use of the term in this context, try again to read and understand his review”
I myself have “support for evolution guided by divine intervention.”
James A. Shapiro, “Evolution Is Neither Random Accidents nor Divine Intervention: Biological Action Changes Genomes” (Spring 2024)
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Support for evolution guided by divine intervention has a toehold in the quasi-scientific Intelligent Design (ID) movement, initiated by Michael Behe (_Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution_, 1996) and carried on by members of the Discovery Institute and other creationist think tanks.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert